A Creed in Stone Creek - Linda Lael Miller [97]
So Melissa had some emotional baggage, he thought. Didn’t everybody, himself included?
Cindy had done a number on him, back in the day. So had a few other women, though to lesser degrees. And as much as he loved Kim, he’d spent a lot of time wishing, as a kid, that his stepmother had never entered the equation in the first place. Why, he’d wondered privately, couldn’t his mom and dad have gotten married, and raised him together, like normal people, instead of shunting him back and forth between two very different worlds until he was old enough to make his own choices?
Finally, Steven had been forced to accept the pertinent facts. Life was messy. It was unpredictable. And 99.9 percent of the time, it didn’t make any damn sense at all.
For all that, it was still good.
It was a gift.
The trouble arose, he reasoned, when he tried to swim upstream, against the flow.
He sighed.
It was a warm summer night. He was going to a country dance with a beautiful woman.
He decided to let that be enough, for the time being.
MELISSA FELT A LITTLE QUIVER of excitement in the pit of her stomach when she opened her front door to find Steven Creed standing on the porch, a bouquet of yellow roses clasped in one hand.
For a moment, she was a teenager again.
Wishing Ashley had stayed to meet Steven, instead of taking Katie home, she stepped back to let him in.
His gaze drifted over her in an appreciative way that didn’t rankle, as it would have with some men. “You look fantastic,” he said.
Melissa smiled. You don’t look so bad yourself, cowboy, she thought, letting her eyes speak for her.
Steven shifted, looking somewhat uneasy. “I’m probably a little early,” he said.
Still smiling, she took the flowers. “I’ll just pop these into a vase and we’ll go,” she told him, leading the way into the kitchen.
There, she filled a vase with water and clipped an inch or so from the end of each of the rose stems, so they’d last longer.
“They’re from the supermarket,” Steven said, from somewhere behind her. He wasn’t touching her, but he was close enough that she could sense the hardness and the heat of him.
Or was that her imagination?
“The florist’s shop was closed,” he added.
She turned, holding the vase full of yellow roses, and said sincerely, “All roses are beautiful. Thank you, Steven.”
A spark of something—possibly relief—lit his blue eyes. “You’re welcome,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse. He crooked an elbow at her. “Shall we?”
Melissa laughed. “Let’s.”
Outside, he hoisted her into the passenger seat of his pickup, his hands strong on the sides of her waist, stirring up all sorts of deliciously uncomfortable sense memories.
They kept the conversation light during the drive— Steven said his barn would be going up fast, because the contractor had talked him into a prefab, and the concrete foundation was scheduled to be poured on Monday. The house would take a little longer, he told her, but it would be livable in a couple of weeks.
“I guess that tour bus is starting to feel a little cramped,” Melissa said, and instantly regretted the remark.
Talk about sense memories.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the slightest grin flicker across Steven’s mouth. “Actually,” he said, “it’s pretty comfortable.”
Melissa was relieved to see the Grange Hall up ahead. The building was historic, dating back to Sam O’Ballivan’s lifetime, and the never-painted walls were weathered by a century of hard rains, deep snows and long, ground-cracking dry spells. Thanks to Brad’s generosity, the place was much sounder than it looked, the roof solid, the dance floor level, the small stage equipped for live music and the productions of the local amateur theater group.
Tonight, cars and pickup trucks jammed the gravel parking lot, and there was a buzz of anticipation in the air. The twang of electric guitars spilled into the sultry evening, a nearly tangible vibrato, and the whole scene reminded Melissa, in a bittersweet flash, of a time long past—back when she and Ashley